Find solution
What are the best schools on hotel and restaurant management?

What are the biggest problems experienced by hotel and restaurant management?

  • What are the biggest challenges for hotel and restaurant management? What are the areas of possible improvements? In which areas technology can help?

  • Answer:

    Balance. You want your guests to be happy, you want their experience to be enjoyable, and you want them to be okay with paying the rate you are charging them. You want the environment to be attractive and to support all that. You want all the amenities and features present that your guests want. You want the staff to be content and to feel a part of it as well, enjoy working there, be okay with what they're being paid. You want everyone to be safe and comfortable. At the same time . . . your property has to make money. You have to charge enough to cover the costs and give a return to the owners/investors. You have to provide maintenance, make repairs, keep it up, preserve the value of it. Even if paying the bills and the mortgage isn't a problem, the owners/investors want more of a return. I've learned time and again - it doesn't matter whether you're a management company, the managing director of an investor group, or you're just an employed manager of a family- or corporate-owned hotel . . . the most important thing to have in place is alignment between yourself and the hotel's owners on exactly where that ideal balance is, and a workable agreement that all can live with on what you must do to achieve that balance. Have that agreement, that alignment, worked out as to that balance; and all else - the property management system, the marketing, revenue management, staffing needs - falls into place. This is where you want your property to go, do each of these things this way, and that balance, that outcome, is handled. It's probably true for any business. I'm glad I run hotels and not hospitals or nursing facilities, where the stakes are higher and involve the life and health of people who are vulnerable and need an added layer of care (How do you arbitrate between the needs of someone whose very life, or health, depends upon you; and the amount of money you can ask them to pay, especially on a low margin?). But even so, I have to deal with some of the same problems sometimes. At least with hotels - unless an extraordinary tragedy occurs, or unless someone involved is behaving really irresponsibly - the downside only gets so badhttp://beechmonthotels.com/open.html

Michael Forrest Jones at Quora Visit the source

Was this solution helpful to you?

Other answers

You have to be careful here because hotel business is all about hospitality, it's the human connection at so many different stages that give guests that warm, inviting feeling. However, there are a number of areas of improvement, where technology can make a positive difference: Computerized Property Management System (PMS) - This is used by front desk staff to make or change reservations, check in/out guests and communicate with housekeeping and maintenance staff. Although today's PMS has come a long way, it is a horrendous piece of software. Sadly, this is what the entire hotel business depends on day in and day out. Front desk operations: It's not always how long a guest has to wait, it feels uninviting to look at a front desk agent buried in the screen. A good PMS will let front desk staff connect with the guest and show off his/her hospitality skills! Reservations: This PMS is also used to make reservations. Help the person sell for a change! before we get started. Give me a sense of what's happening in the area during the requested dates or at least follow what the customer is looking at online. Enhance the quality of my communication via , video call, etc. so you can connect with the guest right then and there. Once the guest is sold, there has to be a way to minimize the typing to fill in that standard name-address-credit card form. Night audit: It is basically an audit of the entire day's activity along with credit card batch processing for the next day checkout guests: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_auditor. Not only is this a pain just like other PMS functions, this important function takes place after midnight when the hotel management is not around. Weird. Housekeeping/Maintenance: Use GPS and video technology for internal updates on room status as well as in-room damage, lost/stolen items, maintenance problems, etc. Revenue Management - Hotel management are having to hire people specifically to manage rates across so many sales channels. Lot of information but Inventory Management - Keeping track of what needs to be ordered and then trying to find good deals with flexible payment terms is important to ensure smooth operations. No serious problems in this department but I won't be surprised if technology can help here as well. Physical Maintenance - It is a surprise and a pain for hotel management to get complains about and hvac. Sometimes the handling can be rough at hotels but it would be worthwhile to implement a high tech plumbing and hvac system specifically for hotels.

Kaushik Merchant

Definitely labor costs. Here is a link to a great eBook on how to control your labor costs. https://www.bizimply.com/resources/control-restaurant-labor-costs/

Gerard Forde

Labor. I have a few other things on mind, but labor tops them. Hotel tends to have a high turnover which leads to multiple costs including hiring, training, retaining, and discharging. Some technology can replace certain personnels, for example a self-check-in kiosks. It allows you to check-in yourself and to assign a room to your reservation. I've also seen some hotel's valet boys carrying a check-in pad with them that is connected to the main reservation system and whenever a guest approaches to the door, they can check the guest in right there. The biggest change I've seen in hotel business is how all the hotels are trying to go green. The CityCenter in Las Vegas, three of the hotels there, Mandarin Oriental, Aria, and Vdara all received LEED certifications. They also use reclaimed water and an onsite power plant. Chain hotels are doing all they can to save papers, water, and energy. Many hotels joined the Earth Hour. And one interesting fact about Wynn is that it has this copper color as its building color because Steve Wynn did a research and found out that this copper color was what the dust looked like in Vegas, and by having that color, they could save a lot of money from doing window washing. It's funny because I brought it up to the management years ago and they didn't take a serious approach then. And now, they become more conscious about the "going green" idea. In Vegas, the area of possible improvement is that they need to improve the basics - the airport and the freeway. It is no use if you keep building hotels and there's only one terminal in the airport and I-15 is filled with traffics and accidents. They are currently adding another terminal, but I think it's a bit too little, too late. The terminal should have been built way before the CityCenter opened. I haven't seen any visible changes/improvement in I-15.

Selina Li

At one point of time, the restaurant managers have to deal with many problems while dealing with the restaurant business. These problems may vary from restaurants to restaurants. Amongst the various problems faced by the restaurant staffs is the confusion of orders, mistakes in the errors, delivery of wrong meals at the wrong tables etc. All these complexities can easily be removed through the eWineDine Application. eWineDine App has an analytic service within the app that keeps a record of every single detail in the activities happening inside the restaurants. To know more about the service, you can click on the given link: http://www.ewinedine.com/details/63-analytics.html

Ankita Patil

They experience different types of the problems for the hotel and restaurant management like the handing the angry customers, meeting customers demands and many more.

Roz Pascual

Related Q & A:

Just Added Q & A:

Find solution

For every problem there is a solution! Proved by Solucija.

  • Got an issue and looking for advice?

  • Ask Solucija to search every corner of the Web for help.

  • Get workable solutions and helpful tips in a moment.

Just ask Solucija about an issue you face and immediately get a list of ready solutions, answers and tips from other Internet users. We always provide the most suitable and complete answer to your question at the top, along with a few good alternatives below.